Thursday, March 26, 2009
Divided consciousness
It's a strange feeling. I go about my daily work as though everything is normal - meetings, calls, teaching, memos, make a cuppa for others - and then I remember the financial volcano beneath our feet. One or the other must be a fantasy, yet I neither run away nor stop following the crisis on the Net. I hate the fuzzy-headedness you get from doublethink.
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5 comments:
Better than false consciousness.
How else can you survive. Think of the extreme - those in the concentration camps.
Do read Burning our Money today. You will really feel like jumping off Beachy Head this weekend.
For me, still in a job, things go on as normal.
For my friend I chatted to over a beer, out of a job and wallowing in debt, things are far from normal. However, even for him the fear of bankruptcy is not really existent. Bankruptcy is not really the shame and punishment it was even a few years ago. Why should he worry? The government safety net will naturally carefully lower everyone onto safe ground.
But in a way that is the really worrying part. It isn't an unreal lack of fear. It is complacency. Nobody cares too much about the outcome. Welfare is now so embedded in the public consciousness that nobody fears losing their job anymore. They feel they would be just swapping hard work and a high income for a low income with vastly increased leisure. Not a bad deal. But of course, if nobody at all is working who will put the food on the table?
Our strange mixture of personal individualism and political socialism has led us to believe there is nothing wrong in ourselves doing nothing and sponging off others - it is only wrong if someone else does no work and sponges off us! It is not our fault, so it must be someone elses fault. And if it is someone elses fault, that someone else should pay.
Sadly so many people now believe this the system is totally unworkable, as it seems we will inevitably discover.
Agreed, Anon. A lad I teach says that at his father's place of work, one guy (away ill more often than not) has accepted voluntary redundancy, got £12k and after settling somed debts, plans to blow the rest (starting with a trip to Orlando) before returning to unemployment. This may not simply be a splurge by an underclass type, but also a winning strategy - why retain any assets that might reduce your benefit entitlements?
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